DEVELOPING ENTERPRISE AND EMPLOYABILITY DURING MOBILITIES [deem]

AN ERASMUS+ FUNDED PROJECT TO BUILD CAPACITY IN MOBILITY ORGANISATIONS OPERATING ACROSS EUROPE

Developing Enterprise and Employability During Mobilities [DEEM] is a project which was funded by the Erasmus+ Programme under the Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices: KA2KA202 - Strategic Partnerships for vocational education and training Action between 2016-2018.

​Since the advent of the Erasmus+ Programme, Gecko (UK) has devised and piloted an Enterprise and Employability programme which is complementary to KA1 VET work placements in foreign organisations.Throughout the lifetime of the project, this programme was shared and improved with the help of a network of European VET partners, working together towards achieving transparency and recognition of skills and qualifications to facilitate learning, employability and labour mobility.

Our now improved DEEM programme complements the KA1 VET mobility schemes, and adds value to them by offering a training scheme that equips and empowers beneficiaries of such projects with entrepreneurship and employability knowledge and skills, leading to sustainable employment at the end of the mobility.

The training programme has been designed to work in symbiosis with the work placement, allowing the students to record both their professional and personal goals through the use of the Individual Development Plan and Log Books that are complementary to the training.The project built on the UK approach to student-centred learning, offering an innovative pedagogical approach to partner nations.

The curriculum materials offer a formal training route, and opportunities for national and ECVET certification. The DEEM programme that we devised is based on an empirical approach, offering immediate solutions to engage employers in work-based learning and to help beneficiaries of mobility schemes into sustainable employment.Through implementing the project, the partnership also led to the development of better quality assurance mechanisms in VET, by identifying clear statements of learning outcomes. We worked together in sharing good/better practices, improving the materials of the Enterprise and Employability programme and then standardised them, with inputs from all the partners representing 5 EU countries.

By using the knowledge of all the partners, we acknowledged the different pedagogical approaches of partners/nations, but also sought to be uniform in our approach, so that the DEEM programme can be used or adopted in any EU nation.The main result of the project: the DEEM network developed a common curriculum which we all own now – both as intellectual property and “own” in terms of our commitment to its quality delivery.

The DEEM training pathway can be adopted or used by any organisation which promotes Erasmus+ KA1 mobility projects, given appropriate credentials for the authors are provided.The DEEM materials can be downloaded by accessing the links below: